"Excuse me, I couldn't help it; mother has made you into such a bundle," he said good-humoredly, as he saw the pained look in Eloise's face. "I'll get your trunk the next train, and you can have your own fixin's. What am I to do?"
This last was to his mother, who explained the way she had gone downstairs when she sprained her ankle twenty years ago come Christmas.
"She must sit down somehow on the top stair and slide down with one before her,—that's you,—and one behind,—that's me,—and she's to put on the mind cure. Miss Jenks says it does a sight of good."
Tim looked at his mother and then at Eloise, whose pitiful face appealed to him strongly.
"Oh, go to grass," he said, "with your mind cure! It's all rot! I'll carry her, if she will let me. I could of done it last night as well as them fine fellows."
He was a rough young boy of sixteen, with uncouth ways; but there was something in his face which drew Eloise to him, and when he said, "Shall I carry you?" she answered gladly, "Oh, yes, please. I don't think I have any mind to put on."
Lifting her very gently in his strong arms, while his mother kept saying she knew he'd let her fall, Tim carried her down and into the best room, where he set her in a rocking-chair, and brought a stool for her lame foot to rest upon, and then said he would go for her trunk, if she would give him her check. There was something magnetic about Tim, and Eloise felt it, and was sorry when he was gone. The world looked very dreary with the fog and rain outside, and the best room inside, with its stiff hair-cloth furniture, glaring paper and cheap prints on the wall—one of them of Beatrice Cenci, worse than anything she had ever seen. She was very fastidious in her tastes, and everything rude and incongruous offended it, and she was chafing against her surroundings, when Mrs. Biggs came bustling in, very much excited, and exclaiming, "For the land's sake, they are comin'! They are right here. They hain't let much grass grow. Let me poke your hair back a little from your forehead,—so! That's right, and more becomin'."
"Who are coming?" Eloise asked.
"Why, Mr. Crompton and his friend. I don't know his name," Mrs. Biggs replied, and Eloise felt a sudden chill as she thought of the figure she must present to them.
If she could only look in the glass and adjust herself a little, or if Mrs. Biggs would throw something over the unsightly slipper and the ankle smothered in so many bandages. The mirror was out of the question. She had combed her hair with a side comb which had come safely through the storm, but she felt that it was standing on end, and that she was a very crumpled, sorry spectacle in Mrs. Biggs's spotted gown, with the handkerchief round her neck. Hastily covering her foot with a fold of the wide gown, she clasped her hands tightly together, and leaning her head against the back of her chair, drew a long breath and waited.